At the beginning of Only Murders in the Building’s fifth episode in season four, “Adaptation,” Marshall P. Pope (Jin Ha), the screenwriter tasked with adapting the OMITB podcast, declares of Being A Writer, “It starts with the look. A look that says: I’m smart, confident, worldly. Important, but not self-important.” (Riffing on the adage, “Dress for the job you want,” which means most bona fide writers tend to come across as “poverty chic” a.k.a. unemployed.) He says this as he proceeds to apply a fake mustache and beard modeled after Charlie Kaufman, whose picture is affixed to the mirror as a daily reference point for “how to channel erudition.” Because Marshall, like many writers, has been conditioned to believe that actually being a good writer isn’t enough. Not only in terms of “getting ahead” (read: financially), but also with regard to Being Taken Seriously. That odious desire that so many in the artistic fields try to concern themselves with in lieu of the art itself. Which is how things quickly start to become tainted—especially at even the faintest smell (more rotten than sweet) of success.
For Marshall, part of not only securing that success, but also keeping it centers on “looking the part.” “The clothes make the man” and all that rot. Indeed, it was another cliché-looking writer, Mark Twain, who wrote (in “The Czar’s Soliloquy”), “…without his clothes a man would be nothing at all; that the clothes do not merely make the man, the clothes are the man; that without them he is a cipher, a vacancy, a nobody, a nothing… There is no power without clothes.” And additional complementing props like spectacles and a pipe, n’est-ce pas?
In short, what Marshall emphasizes is that if you can convince even yourself through the way you “present” that you’re a writer, then surely an Important Person in Charge will also see you that way. But first, Marshall insists, “The page has to dazzle. Bright enough to catch the right person’s eye. And then you get the call: they’re making your movie.” Obviously, this episode of Only Murders in the Building is still promoting an antiquated version of how one “gets discovered” (in line with the lore about Lana Turner being spotted by a talent scout from MGM at Schwab’s Drugstore). And this, too, is part of the reason why writers (whether for film or literature or otherwise) are faced with so much perennial disappointment and self-loathing—they’ve been consistently brainwashed to believe that someone is going to “unearth them.” Rebrand them from a “hunk of junk” into a “treasure.” Now more than ever, that doesn’t happen. Despite many a literary writer’s belief that Reese’s Book Club or BookTok will miraculously pluck them from obscurity.
Though, to the point of TV and social media-related publicity and promotion, the pressure to “look” like a writer (a.k.a. an extremely coiffed version of a formerly rough-hewn one) is greater than it has been at any other time in history. Granted, even back in 2000, a Sex and the City episode titled “Sex and Another City” called out the need of L.A.-based screenwriters to “look hot.” As Miranda’s (Cynthia Nixon) former angry New Yorker friend, Lew (Sam Seder), tells her after she catches him only “tasting his food” and then spitting it out, he snaps, “Do you think I look this good by eating?” When Miranda continues to judge him for it, Lew bites back, “This is fucking L.A., okay?! You have no idea what kind of pressure I’m under here.” Miranda reminds, “Who cares what you look like? You’re a writer!” Without missing a beat, Lew replies, “For a hit TV show.”
Even with literature (therefore, “beyond Los Angeles”), however, image has become everything, often overpowering the content of a novel itself. And it’s not just the gimmicky kowtowing designed to somehow resonate with younger generations (most of which no longer read at all), it’s also the additional pressure put on a writer to not just “look the part,” but also “look good” (manicured, as it were). This has been magnified tenfold as a result of “having to” promote oneself on mediums like Instagram and TikTok, forced to degradingly hold your book up before you twerk with it or some shit. A phenomenon that such authors as Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger would have absolutely balked at. Accordingly, they might not have become famous were they subjected to the extraneous rigors beyond “just writing” in the twenty-first century. F. Scott Fitzgerald, on the other hand, might have still thrived. For he was willing to “sell his soul” by being one of the literary converts to writing screenplays for Hollywood. Could a BookTok have been far behind?
As for Marshall, he delivers an additionally resonant voiceover (it has to be voiceover because, lest one forget, this episode is an homage, in its way, to Adaptation), “You’re a real writer now. You’re convinced the voice in your head, the one that says you’re a fraud, is finally gonna go away. Except it doesn’t. And you start to wonder if it ever will.” It surely won’t if one keeps actively trying to “play a character” (more like caricature) version of a writer. Which, for some reason, still presents the sexist image of a bearded man wearing glasses and a turtleneck. The ultimate cliché—and one that fortifies the belief that all male writers (white or otherwise) are faux-pretentious douchebags.
But if more writers—more real writers (again, a subjective term)—put their foot down and said no to being strong-armed into “looking the part,” maybe writing in general would actually improve. In other words, rather than focusing on the aesthetically performative elements of “the craft” that have taken greater precedence of late, writers could truly focus on what the fuck it is they’re saying. Because what they seem to be saying at the moment is that it’s more important to keep boxing a wide array of voices out on a socioeconomic level. After all, everyone knows it isn’t cheap to look good. Or at least better than your ordinary bedraggled writer self.